1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to equipment and body protection devices used to shield the body from impact forces, but more particularly to body armor and pads used by athletes participating in high contact sports.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the plastics industry it is well known that there exists two primary classes of plastic materials. The two classes are (i.) thermoset plastics, and (ii.) thermoplastics ("thermoformable plastics". Examples of thermoset plastics include urethanes, phenolycs, vinyl resins, and polyester gels. In the industry, it is well known that vinyls were only of the thermoset variety until the late 1960's or early 1970's when the technology improved enabling them to also be made as thermoplastic plastics.
It is also well known that virtually 99% of all vinyls existing today are of the thermoset variety, because thermoset vinyls become sticky at temperatures as low as 120 degrees fahrenheit. The shape of thermoset plastics, as their name implies, are set once and for all by temperature during the forming process. Thermoset plastics do not melt and cannot be reformable by subsequent reforming and heating steps, because they do not plasticize.
Thermoplastics (thermoformable plastics), on the other hand, are reformable and reshapeable during subsequent heating and forming steps after the initial shape and formed is selected. Polyethylene is a thermoformable plastic. Polyethylene does not have a sharp melting rise, thus it can be reheated and reformed by immersion in hot water, reshaped and allowed to cool to retain the new shape.
Foam insulations are also known in the industry to have specific properties. Closed cell foams trap air within the macroscopic pockets or bubbles of the foam. Thus they are typically not used in conjunction with thermoformable plastic materials because they too cannot be reshaped. Open cell foams on the other hand are said to breath and thus are readily reshapeable and bendable because they enable air to pass through the body of the foams via the open cells, pockets or bubbles. Open cell foams are typically incorporated with thermoformable plastic materials because they too can be readily reshaped.
Stiffeners, which are commonly added to plastics, enable the plastic to remain rigid in an original shape and thus, by design, resist reshaping. In fact, stiffeners are added to plastics when it is desirable to have a plastic not capable of being reshaped during subsequent heating and forming processes after the initial heating and forming operation.
In addition, it also well known in the industry that laminate structures having a plurality of layers bonded together with adhesives are thermoset devices, otherwise the layers might separate and the laminate structure would separate, which is believed to be an undesirable characteristic.
Athletes participating in high contact sports such as football and hockey, must wear protective padding and body armor to protect and shield the body from impact forces. For example, football players are known to wear protective shoulder pads, thigh pads, hip and tailbone pads, as well as various rib protecting corsets. The aforementioned devices are designed to provide a series of shock absorbing layers of material over the surface of the body and located at various critical areas. The critical areas include joints, large muscle groups, thin bones, and other locations simply as a means to maintain kinematic alignment of human body parts.
The related devices have a stacked material configuration, using a series of foam pads topped by a hard shell made from a variety of materials, are not particularly useful for redistributing the impact forces on the shell. The related art devices, therefore, are designed predominantly for impact absorption.
Impact absorbing devices still transmit a reduced amount of pressure force directly over the site to be protected.
Further, such devices are often very difficult to apply and are not configured so as to conform to the anatomy of the human body. For example, a set of shoulder pads worn by a football player incorporates numerous laces, straps, buckles and clasps which all require fastening prior to donning the jersey for play.
The related devices also have the limitation that they are not necessarily interchangeable between players. That is, a single set of shoulder pads, thigh pads, hip pads and the like would not fit each player considering the disparity in the body composition of one player as compared to another.
The art to which the invention relates includes U.S. Pat. No. 3,044,075 granted to Rawlings on Jul. 17, 1962 from an application filed Mar. 28, 1960. From column 2, lines 11-12, the Rawlings invention includes a central mounting stiffener. Like all stiffeners, it cannot be reshaped because it is a thermoset plastic. Further, from column 2, lines 16-21 of Rawlings, the stiffener member or core may be made of any relatively stiff, but slightly flexible material, such as a plastic composition or pressed fiber mixed with suitable plastic and stiffener formed under pressure and heat. Such stiffeners, again, are thermoset and the plastics into which they are incorporated are also thermoset by virtue of the added stiffener.
From column 2, lines 33-35, "[t]he material 4 may be polyether, polyurethane, or polyester foam materials." These too are thermoset materials and correspond to the thermoset nature of the Rawlings device. Still further, from column 2, line 37 of Rawlings, foam rubber is also used by Rawlings. Foam rubber is also a thermoset material.
Thus the laminate configuration of the Rawlings device incorporates a plurality of layers bonded together to form the invention by the use of adhesives. As is known in the industry, laminate structures are not thermoformable, they are thermoset.
Accordingly, the protective pad which can be easily attached, molded to fit a variety of users, and having shock dispersing means in conjunction with shock absorbing means of the type described herein, has not been invented.